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Treatments and Experiments

New Parkinson’s therapies aim to halt disease, not just symptoms

Monday, November 07, 2011
The introduction of levadopa therapy more than 40 years ago marked a milestone in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease. The dopamine replacement drug helps control the motor symptoms associated with the neurodegenerative disease, but it does not prevent the further loss of dopamine-producing neurons, so researchers have been on the hunt for more neuroprotective treatment options.

One lead involves blocking Cav1.3, a subunit of a calcium channel that enables the channel to stay open and facilitates dopamine-dependent neuron activity. Two years ago, James Surmeier, a physiologist at Northwestern University in Chicago, first linked calcium signaling, particularly through Cav1.3 channels, to the selective degeneration of dopaminergic neurons. Building on those findings, at the meeting last week Surmeier reported the results of a high-through put screen showing that a compound called pyrimidine 2,4,6trione blocks the Cav1.3 channel in cell culture. These findings dovetail with a paper published earlier this year by another group at Northwestern University showing that similar compounds were also neuroprotective in a cultured cell model of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, suggesting that the drug candidates maybe useful across neurodegenerative diseases.

by Madhumita Venkataramanan
Source:http://www.bioportfolio.com/news/article/851254/New-Parkinson-s-Therapies-Aim-To-Halt-Disease-Not-Just-Symptoms.html